Lawsuit puts spotlight on schools’ shameful priorities

Vergara vs. California — a lawsuit challenging the many job protections given to California’s teachers — is currently being heard in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Experts are skeptical of the plaintiffs’ far-reaching core argument: These job protections violate the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee because they result in denying some students access to an adequate education. But if the lawsuit brings attention to the fact that California’s education establishment is much more worried about keeping tenured teachers employed and happy than about helping struggling students, it will be constructive.

Students Matter, the reform group bringing the lawsuit, says that in a recent 10-year span, only 19 of the state’s 285,000 teachers were fired for incompetence. Where do ineffective teachers end up? By and large, at struggling schools — where many don’t even teach the subjects for which they are trained. A California Watch investigation found that from 2007 to 2011, nearly 10 percent of teachers didn’t have the appropriate credentials, and that the rate was much higher — 16 percent — at schools that were mostly low-income and Latino.

These stunning numbers support the grim thesis of former state Sen. Gloria Romero, an education reformer, that California schools have a civil-rights problem. They also illustrate the huge imbalance between the power wielded by teacher unions and the power wielded by those who think students should be schools’ highest priorities.